UPenn offers new queer bioethics course

The University of Pennsylvania has introduced “Queer Bioethics” as an academic discipline under the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy in the Perelman School of Medicine.

The program was created by Lance Wahlert an associate in the Master of Bioethics Program, and Autumn Fiester, director of graduate studies in the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy.

The two teamed up in 2010 to create a queer bioethics course and have diligently worked to expand the program. According to the Daily Pennsylvanian (DP), the project has more than 300 scholars from 25 countries with a journal dedicated to the subject in the works.

Wahlert and Fiester plan to integrate more “queer content” into preexisting bioethics courses at Penn.

An example of a few of the issues listed on the website site which the project will focus on include “recognition of LGBT patient surrogates,” “blood donation standards for same-sex sexually active individuals,” “the dilemmas of gay youth studies,” and “hetero-biased sex education.”

“The test of whether queer bioethics is sustained and whether it succeeds will not be the popping up of literal departments,” Fiester told the DP. “It will be the proliferation of deep and profound scholarship and work.”

University of Pennsylvania administrators did not respond to requests for comment to LI’s Campus Reform.

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